Period pricing references (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)

From: Bryan Pope <bpope_at_wordstock.com>
Date: Thu Apr 25 12:21:37 2002

And thusly Ethan Dicks spake:
>
>
> One of the cool things about an Atari 800 system a friend gave me when
> he moved was that it came with Atari official price sheets, and, since
> the donor was an Engineer, he saved every single receipt for every
> item he ever bought - $2,500 for the base system (CPU, 32KB RAM,
> printer, external serial ports, modem, two floppies, acoustic coupler,
> tape drive, manuals, joysticks, etc.) and that was about 80% of MSRP!
> It's only one data point, but it is *spot on*. Some real person paid
> those real dollars for a machine that is completely documented.
>
> It's also interesting to look back at what the big iron used to cost.
> Somewhere, I have a DEC third-party-reseller flyer listing the RA81
> at $14,000 (we paid $26,000 for one in 1984) - that's about $33/MB,
> or about 1650000% more than a modern 100GB drive ($0.002/MB)
>
> While I don't have a massive pile of pricing data (that isn't in
> the backs of magazines), I think it's an interesting category of
> data to save. Sometimes the "good old days" don't look so good.
>

But can you really compare the smaller-faster-cheaper of today *directly* to
what was available say, in 1980? Wouldn't that be like comparing how much
groceries were in 1980 without factoring in inflation?

This is like a pet peeve of mine - reviews of classic games that have been
ported to modern systems. The reviewer will always point out how blocky the
graphics are or how the sound leaves a lot to be desired. :-(

Cheers,

Bryan
Received on Thu Apr 25 2002 - 12:21:37 BST